The Most Powerful Range Rover Ever Is Surprisingly Fuel Efficient

Slide: 2 /of 8.Caption: Caption: Jaguar Land Rover took the supercharged 5-liter V8 engine from the Ranger Rover Sport HSE and tuned it to deliver more horsepower and more torque, without turning any extra gas. Land Rover

Slide: 3 /of 8.Caption: Caption: It goes from 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds and hits a top speed of 162 mph. Land Rover

Slide: 2 /of 8Caption: Caption: Jaguar Land Rover took the supercharged 5-liter V8 engine from the Ranger Rover Sport HSE and tuned it to deliver more horsepower and more torque, without turning any extra gas. Land Rover

Slide: 3 /of 8Caption: Caption: It goes from 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds and hits a top speed of 162 mph. Land Rover

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If you think of SUVs as slow, lumbering vehicles, you haven’t seen the Range Rover Sport SVR. The fastest and most powerful Land Rover ever, an exercise in excess, debuts at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this weekend. It hits 60 mph in 4.5 seconds and its top speed is 162 mph. That’s approaching supercar territory, in a rolling leather-lined vault that weighs 5,148 pounds and has room for five and cargo.

Jaguar Land Rover hasn’t released a price for its latest creation, but if you’re reading this at work instead of on your yacht, don’t expect to take one home. But the things that make the SVR so absurdly over the top are relevant to less loaded car shoppers. Forget about touches like the “Santorini Black contrast roof” and racing-inspired back seats. The impressive bits of the new SUV are in the body and under the hood, and they’re all about saving gas.

Fuel economy is a big deal for Jaguar Land Rover. Per federal CAFE standards, automakers have to hit increasingly stringent fuel economy figures. That isn’t too tricky for, say, Volkswagen. It’s diesels and hybrids offset much thirstier (and less numerous) Porsches and Bugattis. But Jaguar Land Rover makes only high end cars. It can’t scrimp on performance to save gas.

And so Jaguar Land Rover took the supercharged 5-liter V8 engine from the Ranger Rover Sport HSE and tuned it to deliver more horsepower and more torque without burning extra gas. The SVR produces 540 horsepower and 500 pound-feet of torque—on par with cars like the BMW M5, Cadillac CTS-V, and Porsche 911 Turbo. And it offers 22.1 mpg, about what you get in a new Kia Sportage or Subaru Forester. The SVR lapped Germanys’ famed Nürburgring Nordschleiffe racetrack in 8 minutes 14 seconds, which was the same time posted by the Maserati GranTurismo MC. To up the power without hurting fuel economy, engineers lowered the internal friction in the engine, added a high-pressure direction injection system, and threw in a stop/start system that cuts the engine when the car idles.

It helps that the Range Rover Sport, which hit the market last year, is 39 percent lighter than its predecessor, due to its all-aluminum monocoque body. The automaker used aluminum in the SVR’s engine and suspension as well. It’s lighter and stronger, but more expensive, than steel. It’s key to Jaguar Land Rover’s plans for meeting those CAFE standards (lots of other automakers are using it as well, most notably Ford in the new F-150 pickup). Jaguar Land Rover says it’s also considering diesel and hybrid offerings, but we haven’t seen any concrete plans yet.

The Range Rover Sport SVR isn’t the only extreme performance car that posts impressive mpg numbers. McLaren’s new 650S runs from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds flat, and can go 24.2 miles on a gallon of gas. The new Corvette Stingray delivers 29 mpg. So the SVR (along with the McLaren and maybe the Corvette) may be out of your reach, but it’s nice to know that it’s a sign of a future where cars can deliver huge power without emptying the tank every few minutes.

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